Site Mobile Navigation

Making It Clear That a Clear Parking Space Isn’t

Oh, look, a cleared parking spot! But be advised: Drivers who ignore makeshift space savers like these in South Boston may risk ugly repercussions.Credit
Katherine Taylor for The New York Times

BOSTON — By dawn on Tuesday, the space savers were out in abundance on East Seventh Street in South Boston. Someone had staked out a neatly shoveled parking spot with a potted plant, its dead fronds trembling in the wind. Someone else had reserved a space with a hot-pink beach chair.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, the epicenter of the parking wars that erupt here after a snowstorm, the narrow streets were lined with bar stools and coolers, end tables and shopping carts, all meant as warnings: This shoveled-out space is mine until the snow melts. Occupy it at your own risk.

Marguerite Maguire, who had an orange parking cone ready to guard her spot, was hoping to avoid the kind of confrontation she got into after a 2009 snowfall, when someone tried taking her space the minute she finished clearing it.

“I told her, ‘Forget it, lady,’ and we yelled at each other for a few minutes until she pulled away,” Mrs. Maguire, 50, recalled. “I think she must have been new here.”

Though not unique to Boston — Chicago, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are among the other cities that embrace it — space-saving after snowstorms has an impassioned history here, especially in scrappy, densely populated South Boston. When snow puts parking spots at a premium, as the blizzard that just left 18 inches of snow here did, snatching someone’s marked space can lead to hurled insults, slashed tires or worse — in 2005, a man was arrested after smashing a car window with a plunger during an argument over a freshly shoveled spot.

“A lot of people around here carry screwdrivers in their trunk,” said Kim Rader, 35, who had just started digging out her Mazda and predicted it would be a two-hour job.

Her boyfriend, Paul Melvin, 41, said he did not condone tire-slashing and other violent tactics but understood them.

“I’d prefer to stay away from that sort of behavior,” Mr. Melvin said, “but at the same time, it’s very disappointing and frustrating when someone comes along and takes a space without earning it.”

When Mayor Thomas M. Menino tried to limit the practice in 2004, saying it had gotten out of hand, and threatened to dispatch crews to remove what he called “this rummage sale” of space savers 48 hours after a snow emergency ended, the neighborhood known as Southie revolted. James M. Kelly, then the neighborhood’s representative on the City Council, warned Mr. Menino that residents had “more cones and barrels” than the city had “trucks to haul them away.”

The 48-hour rule remains on the books, but some residents said Tuesday that it was rarely enforced. The biggest gamble is to stake out spots with shopping carts from the local Stop & Shop, said Bernie Trager, a lifelong Southie resident, because the store pays someone to go through the neighborhood and retrieve them.

Mr. Trager, 54, digs out other people’s cars after snow for a fee, but does not dare move his own Dodge Ram and rely on a space saver.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

“Last year, I shoveled out a spot,” he said. “I came back, and somebody had moved my buckets and taken it. It was my landlady’s daughter. I took that one on the chin, but I’m not taking any more chances.”

For the uninitiated, a local blog, Caught in Southie, helpfully lists the “unofficial rules” for saving parking spots, including: “If you move someone’s space saver and park your car in its place, you have no right to complain about what happens to your car. However, you are allowed to retaliate as long as you don’t get caught.”

The blog also suggests it is safe to ignore the 48-hour rule, saying, “As long as you’re not the last one with a cone out, you’re cool.”

But some residents chafe at neighbors who block off parking spots for weeks or even months.

“If they could,” said Phyllis Simon, 62, “some people would do it until the last piece of slush is melted.”

Mrs. Simon, a Southie native, said the most “awesome” space saver she had seen was a table set for two, complete with a bottle of wine. Mrs. Maguire said her weirdest sighting was a toilet — “I can’t imagine the person moving it every time they park,” she said — and Kevin Carroll, who marks his space with an orange cone, said his strangest sighting was “one of those old TVs in the wooden cabinets.”

Space savers spotted Tuesday included a tripod, several containers of kitty litter, a stroller, a cat scratching post, an air purifier and a laundry basket full of folded clothes. None, though, rivaled the bust of Elvis Presley that someone used in 2009.

Maria Bonanno, 18, who was coated in snow as she dug out her Volkswagen Jetta, paused when asked whether she had ever claimed someone else’s shoveled space.

“Um,” she said. “Yeah, probably once.”

There were no repercussions, she said, because it was a neighbor’s space and neighbors in Southie tolerate one another’s occasional slips.

“If you’re friends with them, it’s all good,” Ms. Bonanno said. “I know enough people to get me out of trouble if I need to.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2010, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Making It Clear That a Clear Parking Space Isn’t. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe